https://tild.es/55n has some discussion about this already, and now that this feature is actually implemented, I'd be interested what your opinions on allowing users to edit their own topic titles after posting are.

My main argument is that it would allow fixing typos and providing significant updates — think adding a [Solved] marker in the title for topics related to some problem or reflecting a title update of a linked article — without having to contact other users that have permissions to do that. The topic log allows that to happen transparently already.

A recent thread has had its title changed due to the title being sensationalized. I'm not sure that this is the correct move, as the title in question was also the title of the submitted article. I think this does a disservice to the community as a whole, as it makes it appear as though we want to editorialize the content submitted here which seems to go against the ideal of fostering quality discussion.

"But wait!", I hear you say, "We have a topic log!" That will be ignored, easily, especially by those seeking to equate the community with something else. While we're busy misrepresenting content (because that's what changing a title does, it misrepresents), others will point at us and shout about how we're misrepresenting the content being posted. I cannot agree with this, and I think its detrimental to the community and the idea of Tildes as a whole. Note: Text-only posts obviously are excluded from this, I'm concerned with titles on submitted links that have their own title.

Now, what happens when the title of an article is already sensationalist and editorialized? The authors, editor, and publisher obviously have biases and platforms they want to support. It currently seems as though we are changing titles to something different than what the title of the article is, and I find this extremely off-putting. I can understand wanting to avoid bringing that bias over to Tildes, but I cannot understand a reason to deliberately misrepresent that bias by changing an article's title. I think this is going to be detrimental to the community and the mission of Tildes to generate high-quality discussion.

Where articles with sensationalized headlines are posted, I propose that we must retain those titles. The system of tagging is sufficient to indicate that a title is too strongly sensationalized. Deviating from this norm is antithetical with Tildes' mission to generate and foster quality content and discussion.

There are too many responses to really get into things individually, but I must say I feel as though there has been a breach of trust. I had no idea that altering the titles of submissions would go so far, and it has destroyed the image I had of the site. Maybe the site will evolve more as the experiment continues, who knows. In the meantime, I've been accused of making arguments in bad faith multiple times in this thread. I'm deeply offended by this, as I've tried to present my thoughts and feelings as clearly as I could. This is deeply troubling to me, especially since those accusations have been given strong support by other users.

unless we stopped editing titles

This is a misrepresentation, I only ask that titles match the article they're from. Edit away if the title doesn't match the article, or is a user's text post. Maybe I wasn't clear, but there it is spelled out.

Also, there was never an ultimatum, but Deimos and other users would smear me with such claims. Being unsure of whether or not a community is a good fit for yourself is not nearly the same thing as an ultimatum.

I think it'd be useful to merge duplicate threads when there's two topics that are very close to each other. I don't want the stackExchange style "closed as duplicate of x," but I think it would be worthwhile to simply have the comments moved to the oldest thread and transfer any votes that are different users on each topic.

This way, we aren't losing discussion by flat-out deleting topics that are dupes, and we're also able to take some sort of action on threads that are dupes.

Just a thought.

I'm fairly sure it's either a Reddit or RES feature, but whenever I select text in a comment and then click Reply, it'll copy that text to the comment box and add a > in front so it'll turn into a quote. It makes it a little quicker to respond to a specific part of someone's message.

I'm no IT bird and as such I don't know if this is something that can be implemented easily(if at all). It'd also require more JS, not sure if that's an issue as well.

In any case, let me know what you think.

Edit: I'd like to suggest something else, should I make a secondary post or append it to this one? I'd like to avoid cluttering up the front page.

I'd like to be able to bookmark posts from the front page. Right now it really isn't an issue yet since posting frequency is low, but I often quickly check the front page for interesting reads, while not having the time to actually read them. I'd like to see a "Bookmark" button on front page posts that allow me to save those posts for later when I actually do have time to read the posts.

For quick scrolls over the front page, tapping the post and then bookmarking is one click too many.
You could argue I'm lazy, I call it efficiency.

While on the subject, if I click "bookmark" on a topic, it'll read "bookmarked" but does not offer an "unbookmark" option until I refresh the page. Since I have big thumbs(large bones) I often tap wrong, so it could be nice if there was a quick way to undo this, similar to how we can undo votes.
Edit: this seems to be a bug: it does work for comments.
Edit2: Made this into an issue.

Basically, the ability to receive a notification whenever someone comments on a subscribed topic. Currently, there is a save option (Unless it's been removed? I'm looking now and can't seem to find it) which makes for a decent solution for the time being, but personally I know how easy it is to forget all about what you have saved and have it fly completely under your radar. I, for one, think it would be a good idea if you could subscribe to a topic you're interested so you don't completely forget and miss some discussion.

As per subject - it'd be nice to hide topics from the front page.

The use case is very simple - if I see a topic that I have no interest in, I'd rather for its spot to be taken by some other topic that currently sits "below the fold".

Hiding a topic should remove it from the front page only, but leave it visible on the group page. It would also probably make sense to mark the topic there in some way and have an "unhide" option there.

Alternatively, have a switch for the front page to toggle between "full view" and "view without hidden topics".

Just a few minutes ago I moved this topic from ~creative to ~music, but almost immediately began second guessing my decision. I'm not exactly sure where that belongs, because it's music, but it is creative/the OP's original song. What do you think? Is ~creative more for crafts, IE woodworking and the likes, or anything creative done by the OP? Similarly, I can think of more examples for this, such as if someone wants to show off their Raspberry Pi project, do they put it in ~comp or ~creative? Where does it belong?

We have the "Exemplary" label for comments, which identifies comments as particularly good, and even boosts their ranking within threads.

Now that we've had this for a while, I keep finding myself want to do the same for topics. I'll read an article and want to give it an extra boost because it's better than average.

I'm ready for an equivalent to the "Exemplary" label for topics.

Yesterday @talklittle posted the topic Halloween game sales are live. What are your Horror/Halloween-themed recommendations?. There have been some good recommendations and whatnot. If you like horror games and weren't aware of the ongoing sales, go check out the comments for some recommendations.

Being the meta-killjoy that I am, I started this sidebar about the top comment. tl;dr: I don't think this type of content engenders Tildes's discussion forward community.

Fell free to read the whole thread of comments for some civil discussion on the matter, but I do want to open this up to all of Tildes: should this type of comment be policed on Tildes?

Also: do you think this type of comment is good? Do you agree with me that it's retroactive to Tildes's goals? Am I just a big killjoy? Given that the comment I'm calling into question is the top comment of that topic, I'm probably David in this arena but I want to hear it from everyone else.

At the moment, there are two types of topics that can be posted on Tildes:

• Link topics, which consist of a title and a URL.

• Text topics, which consist of a title and text.

These two types of topic are supported by having three input fields for new topics: Title; Link; Text.

I propose that we combine these two topic types into just one topic type. The submission page for all topics will include only two fields: a title field and a general all-purpose text box. The submitter will type a title for their post, and then put anything else into the general all-purpose box.

If the submitter is posting off-site content, they can put the link to that content in the all-purpose box. If they want to provide a summary of the off-site content, they can write the summary in the all-purpose box, with the link.

If the submitter is posting their own original content (no link), they can type their text into the all-purpose box.

The single all-purpose box includes everything that is currently split between the Link and Text boxes. When the topic is posted, everything entered in that all-purpose box is displayed in the main body of the post.

At the moment, summaries of off-site content are usually being posted as comments under the main topic, as a result of a change made a few months ago. These comments merely clutter up the thread. If these summaries were in the post itself, that clutter would be reduced.

One topic type, one streamlined submission page, one place for all topic content.

I'm a big fan of "discussion threads" over on reddit, if you're unfamiliar they're essentially threads a subreddit will pin every day or week where you can post things that don't deserve a full post or are slightly frivolous or off topic. To give an example, a while back I wanted to make a post with some thoughts on Coleridge's "Ode to Dejection", but after typing it out didn't think there was enough to warrant making a thread over it. I didn't feel like doing a more extensive analysis or trying to artificially broaden the scope (ie, doing something like "what's a poem you like?" as an excuse for sharing my thoughts), so I just trashed it.

I like discussion threads because they help save "small" content like that as well as helping to build a sense of community and are just generally quite comfy.

However, I recognize that there can be some downsides:

• May end up being "low quality" in the minds of certain users. I know this is somewhat contentious, since the site culture is still being established, I personally don't want Tildes to be that serious but I know some people do.

• Normal group activity could drop if people opt to use the discussion thread instead of making a post. This is doubly bad because the site is small.

As a lurker on the somethingawful forums one of my favorite features is a button which will show all the posts a single person has made in a thread. It'd be really handy if someone (like the OP) is answering questions about a topic. It's really nice to have on a more traditional forum website, but I'm not sure how useful it'd be here. Regardless, I thought I would suggest it.

Here is an example: Before and After

Something you see frequently on Reddit are subreddits that have developed their own slang, jokes and references. That's part of the reason why Reddit feels like a collection of communities more than one website divided into sections, which is what Tildes look like right now.
The question is, do we want that sort of stuff here?

I was reading a discussion about this on here earlier today, and I've already lost it! 😬 Sorry if this is just creating more noise, but we clearly need better ways to find content. The search feature will go a long way, but here are some other ideas:

Tag search. On any topic with tags, the tags should be clickable links to URLs like https://tildes.net/tag/elder+scrolls. This page would show all topics that use that tag, with sort and filter options. There should be a way (maybe built into the search form) to type any tag and jump straight to this page.

Recently viewed topics list. Reddit shows a sidebar listing the last n posts you viewed. It's admittedly a little creepy seeing your history displayed like that, but it's a useful way to jump back into conversations for follow-up later. The old Reddit design had a "clear" button to delete the history, but curiously that is no longer present in the redesign. (Privacy features like that should not be overlooked here.)

Saved topics. Another feature from Reddit. Every post has a "Save" link below it, that adds the post to your personal saved posts list, which can reached from your profile. Saved post lists are only visible to the users that own them.

Repost detection. I really like how Ask MetaFilter helps posters make sure their content is fresh before they publish it. The submit button under the new post form is labeled "Preview" and clicking it shows what the post will look like before publishing it. This gives posters the opportunity to proofread and ensure their text formatting is correct. More importantly, the site scans the content of the post and displays a list of five possible existing posts that match it:

The following previously-posted questions might be related to the question you're asking. Please take a look before posting to see if any of these answer your question.

This flow adds an additional click before you can actually post, but I think it's for the best. The slowdown politely nudges you toward considering the quality and originality of what you're about to say, without being overbearing. The main MetaFilter site also checks all URLs you enter to see if anyone has posted them before. Note that these tools don't prevent anyone from posting, they just empower users to avoid reposting and reinforce good posting behaviors.

Repost flagging. I have a half-baked idea about allowing users to flag topics as reposts, but I haven't seen this implemented before. This would be separate from voting. A user wishing to flag a topic would be asked to provide the URL of an existing topic it duplicates. This wouldn't affect the topic itself, other than to add a small banner to the top of the page: "n users flagged this as a repost of the following topics: [list of links]". Then anyone would have the ability to [agree], [disagree], or append a link to the list. Public consensus would affect the future of the topic... if enough others agree the topic is redundant, it could be auto-deleted or just algorithmically prioritized lower than non-reposts. If enough disagree, the flag could be auto-removed from the topic. The usernames of the flaggers should be public, and there should be a way to view both a user's frequency of flagging and whether consensus agreed with those flags. Accountability would be important for this sort of system.

Ability to subscribe to users. I saw the other feature request for a "friend" mechanic. I agree with the commenters who said it would be too much like a social network. However, I could see a use case for a "Subscribe" button on a user's profile page, just like the ones on group pages. This would cause all topics posted by that user to be included in your main page, even if they are in groups you aren't subscribed to.

I'd be interested to hear your feedback on these suggestions, as well as other ideas specific to increasing content visibility.

Are users supposed to be able to continue to comment in topics that have been deleted? Once deleted, topics are no longer visible to the group, but the topic is still accessible by URL and users can continue to comment. I just want to clarify if this is the intended functionality or a bug.

Example: https://tildes.net/~test/280/deleted_topic

I'm currently using 24 hour sort, and it's great, minus one thing - threads older than 24 hours just disappear. Perhaps a better implementation would be to keep the threads showing up underneath the <24 hour ones, but prevent them from being bumped up by new posts.

Example - if I go to ~comp right now, there are only 5 posts. Older ones, imo, should still be visible, just no longer bumping.

I've found that it's difficult to keep track of threads I found interesting but are no longer highly active, especially without a search function. My suggested solution is the ability to subscribe to updates on a topic/thread (whatever you want to call it) and enable easy access to checking up on the thread for updates without having to receive a direct reply to my comment on the topic. If this already exists and I'm just blind, let me know!